My Name: Matthew Sanborn Smith. My challenge: Write 1000 stories by the time I'm 50 years old. Current story count: 160. Current age: 48. (Yes, I know it will never happen. I push on regardless.)
The One-Thousand is made up of stories that are aimed at publication in professional venues.
I've been published at Tor.com, Nature, and Chizine, among others. Listen to me on the occasional StarShipSofa and every single Beware the Hairy Mango. Shoot me an e-mail at upwithgravity@gmail.com

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

The Greek Legacy

See, I can make fun of customers here because none of them will read this blog. Today while I was helping a customer, a second customer approached my fellow employee, Paula, and asked, "Do you have Suh-FAH-klis?" (I'm writing it the way she said it, emphasis on the middle syllable.) I was thinking it was some nutty New Age philosophy or twist on an eastern religion. I don't know what tipped Paula off, maybe the lady showed her what she wanted on a slip of paper as she said it, but Paula asked, "Sophocles?" and the lady said, "Yeah, that's it."

This reminded me of a phone call from about a month ago. A guy asked me if we had The Writings of Aristotle, Volume 1. While I was looking it up on the computer, he asked a someone who was with him, "Hey, who wrote that?"

Which in turn reminded me of a joke my dear friend, Aslan (No, he was not a lion), used to spout whenever the Greeks came up. He used to talk about the famous Greek philosopher, Testacles (You want to say it like he did, for that special Greeky flavor - TEST-uh-cleez). I like to think of old Testacles as the father of urology.